Update: President Eisgruber ’83, Higher-Ed Leaders Call on Trump to ‘Rectify or Rescind’ Immigration Order

By Princeton Alumni Weekly

Published online February 2, 2017

President Eisgruber ’83 and University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann drafted a letter sent to President Donald Trump Feb. 2 urging him to “rectify or rescind the recent executive order closing our country’s borders to immigrants and others from seven majority-Muslim countries and to refugees from throughout the world.” The message, signed by Eisgruber, Gutmann, and 46 other American college and university presidents, said that Trump’s order “threatens both American higher education and the defining principles of our country.”

Higher-education leaders who signed the letter included Princeton alumni Mark Schlissel ’79, the president of the University of Michigan, and Hunter R. Rawlings III *70, the interim president of Cornell University; presidents of all eight Ivy League institutions were among those who signed.

In a Jan. 29 statement to the University community, Eisgruber wrote that immigration is “indispensable to the mission and the excellence of America’s universities, which enhance this country’s economy, security, and well-being through the students they educate and the ideas they generate.” Responding to President Donald Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order that blocked entry for refugees and citizens of seven predominantly Muslim nations, he said that Princeton is assisting students and scholars affected by the executive order, including those who are currenlty traveling abroad.